I remember speaking at the American Medical Women's Association and getting into an argument with a woman radiologist. I was asking, and quite politely I thought, why she didn't consider Thermography a safer tool to screen for breast cancer than radiating the body with mammogram X-rays.

You would have thought I killed her first-born... and maybe that was her fear. Taking away her livelihood and her favorite tool.

We have known for over a decade that Mammograms do NOT save lives. Now in the past couple of years researchers have finally come to recognize that mammograms can cause cancer with their cumulative ionizing radiation.

So, what's a girl to do? Why are we still getting our breasts smashed and irradiated with cancer causing X-rays? Good question.

My advice? Find a good Thermography practitioner and get periodic testing. Even if you have to travel to do it!

I'm serious.

While in LA last month I visited with my friend, Dr. Galina Migalko, a medical doctor who is skilled in Medical Thermography and Diagnostic Ultrasonography.

Thermography is a painless, non-invasive, adjunctive state of the art clinical test without any exposure to radiation, and is used as part of an early detection program which gives women of all ages the opportunity to increase their chances of detecting breast disease at an early stage.

One of the reasons Mammography doesn't save lives is that it is too late when it detects tumors. But Thermography may detect breast cancer years earlier than Mammography. Looking through computerized full body Thermography scans I was amazed at what could be discerned about a patient's health.

Instead of chopping up the body into individual parts and doing testing, a doctor who is trained in Thermography looks at a full picture of the body and can then put all the pieces together to create an overall diagnosis. If something is found on Thermography, they can immediately use Ultrasound to learn more if needed. This is far superior to having to wait and worry for weeks to do follow up testing on something that may have shifted in the meantime.

Diagnostic Medical Thermography and Ultrasound are complimentary tests. When using these two diagnostic tests together the diagnostic sensitivity goes up to over 95%.

And how much more sane than the latest "fad" of doing full body CT Scans with radiation doses equivalent to hundreds of chest X-rays. Thermography is unique in that it shows physiology or "what's happening" in the tissues as opposed to CT's, MRI's and other static pictures of simple anatomy. It is the only imaging test that can show pain, inflammation, lymphatic congestion, and more.

This testing is not just for women! Thermography can detect early signs of arthritis, neck and back pain, dental infections, headaches and sinus infections, immune dysfunction, fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), digestive disorders, bursitis, ligament or muscle tears, nerve problems, as well as screen for strokes and detect cancer in the very early stages.

Carolyn Dean, MD, ND